Here is a baby quilt I made a few months back that I am finally getting around to posting. This is also my Blogger's Quilt Festival entry!
I made this quilt for no one in particular. The inspiration for it came last year while we were staying in Arizona. I consider myself completely lucky that I even found the inspiration since I discovered it in a place that I normally don't go: the gym. So the apartments we were living in had a really nice clubhouse, and usually my girls and I would make our way over there once or twice a week for the delicious and free fresh baked cookies they always had. So one day while on a cookie run, we used a different entrance to the clubhouse than we normally did and it took us right past the workout room, aka the gym. Normally I never would have even looked in there since I'm not really a gym kind of girl (I'm completely content with a workout video in the comfort of my own living room). Anyway, as we walked past the room I glanced through the open door and as luck would have it, on the one wall I could see there was a giant mirror reflecting this fabulous piece of wall art:
I have no idea who the artist is...but I think this piece is brilliant! When I saw it I knew immediately that it would somehow become a quilt! So later on I went back to the gym and covertly snapped a picture.
It took me a while to actually sit down and come up with a design for the quilt and then a while longer to decide what fabrics to use. Once I figured out exactly what I wanted to do, I mocked it up in Inkscape. I printed just the corner of one shape and cut it out to use as a template. Next, I figured out the measurements of each shape, cut the appropriate sized rectangles out of the printed fabric and used my template and a rotary cutter to round the corners and cut out the middles. Then I appliqued them onto a single piece of gray fabric using Bonash (fusible powder). I have decided I really like Bonash for quilts like this...other methods I have tried are either more time consuming or they leave the quilt too stiff. One drawback of this method is the edges can fray a bit more, but for me that's not a deal-breaker. Anyway, to finish it up, I secured the shapes with a blanket stitch in matching thread.
And...the quilting. I think I was in a hurry to get this quilted...yeah, I was in a hurry. My quilting machine was making a funny sound and I had scheduled it for maintenance, but I wanted to finish this quilt first. :) So the whole time I was quilting it I kept saying to my machine, "please don't die, please don't die!" And it didn't. Anyway, I had a really hard time trying to come up with a good way to quilt it (sound familiar?). In the end, I chose a ridiculously tedious design...pebbling. After I started it I realized that pebbling was totally the wrong choice for a speedy finish. But I still got it done in time and became more adept at pebbling. I couldn't decide what to do inside the shapes...so I decided to just do nothing. Now I'm thinking this quilt would have been perfect for some trapunto!
After I finished it, every time I looked at it I thought the shapes looked kinda like a bunch of cinder blocks stacked on each other...hence the name.
Yay for quilting! Enjoy the rest of the quilts in the festival!!
